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Spring 2019 Courses

English 65 Introduction to Playwriting (4) (19047)

An introduction to writing for the stage, with an emphasis on creating characters, maintaining tone, shaping metaphor, and using the resources available to theatre artists to a writer’s best advantage. Combines in-class exercises with seminar style discussion of the student’s work. Cross-listed with Theatre 65-10 (19046)
TR 10:45-12:00 Pepper

English 96 Hamilton: Texts and Contexts (4) (17334)

What made the Broadway musical Hamilton so wildly successful? What was it about this 250 year old story that speaks to audiences today? This course will explore both the modern cultural phenomenon of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s award winning musical as well as the biographical and historical documents that Miranda used to create it. How did hip-hop, jazz, classical, and Broadway ballads revive the story of one of our lesser known founding fathers? What do Miranda’s casting choices tell us about our modern cultural moment in terms of race, immigration, and nationality? We will start by studying the music and lyrics of the show itself. We will then turn to Ron Chernow’s biography of the historical figure that inspired the musical. Finally, we will read selections of Hamilton’s own writings, and visit the Library’s Special Collections where some of the original documents are housed.
TR 2:35-3:50 Monahan

English 100 Working with Texts (4) (14853)

A course to help students to become, through intense practice, independent readers of literary and other kinds of texts; to discern and describe the devices and process by which texts establish meaning; to gain an awareness of the various methods and strategies for reading and interpreting texts; to construct and argue original interpretations; to examine and judge the interpretations of other readers; to write the interpretive essay that supports a distinct position on some literary topic of importance; and to learn to find and assimilate into their own writing appropriate information from university library resources. To be rostered as early as possible in the English major's program.
TR 10:45-12:00 Lotto

What can documentary films tell us about the nature of creativity? What defines it? Why does it matter to people? Some of the course films explore activities such as painting, music and dance that we commonly associate with the term “art.” Others explore the role of creative imagination in other activities, including political dissent, recovery from trauma, and relationships with animals. Most of the course films are about people who have been marginalized because of their race, gender, class position, mental health or political beliefs. We will ask how the subjects of these documentaries use imaginative work to define themselves and transform their communities. At the same time, we will ask how the documentaries frame their subjects, visually and narratively, and explore the ways in which documentaries are themselves acts of creative imagination and interpretation. Finally, the course will ask you to consider the role of creativity in your own life.
Films will include Searching for Sugar Man, Waste Land, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, 20 Feet from Stardom, What Happened, Miss Simone?, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Grizzly Man, and Rize. Readings for the course will include scholarship on documentary form and production, psychological accounts of creativity and play by D.W. Winnicott and Marion Milner, and cartoonist Lynda Barry’s meditations on the creative process in her graphic “autobifictionalography” One! Hundred! Demons! Cross-listed with WGSS 104-10 (18829)
TR 2:35-3:50 Handler

English 105 Intro to Latinx Literature and Culture (4) (19257)

This course provides an overview of the literary history and criticism of Latinx literature and media. Through a combination of critical and literary theory, we will focus on Latinx-centered texts including poetry, prose, film, and television which portray issues of migration/immigration, colonialism, history, race, and gender. We will also examine the role of literature in the development of Latinx Studies. Authors and scholars featured in the course include José Martí, Pura Belpré, Pedro Pietri, the Young Lords Party, Julia Alvarez, and Gloria Anzaldua. Some questions that will inform our readings of these texts: 1) How do Latinx writers incorporate and revise U.S. and Latin American literary traditions? 2) How does the organization of Latin@ literature present challenges to U.S. canon formation?
The course readings will consist of a combination of popular articles, speeches, poetry, fiction, and scholarly works. The readings are meant to guide students through a foundation of theory and research into areas of practice, and also raise issues regarding the “canon” and the “counter-canon.” Assignments include a short written analysis of a text (5 pages) and a longer, research project (8-10 pages) which can take the form of a research paper, teaching plan, or multimedia video. Student will also keep a service-learning journal from our interactions with local community organizations. The interactive format (lecture, small group discussion, in-class writing) of this course will also require students active participation. Cross-listed with LAS 105-10 (19250)
MW 12:45-2:00 Jimenez Garcia

English 124 Masterpieces of American Literature: The Challenges of Modernity (1865- present) (4) (18860)

An introduction to the marvels of modern American literature. We will read some of the most celebrated literature in the American tradition. We will consider the social, political and psychological questions that have preoccupied American writers since the Civil War, including the ongoing contradictions of race relations in the U.S., transformations in attitudes about gender and sexuality, and the hopes and crises that have accompanied industrialization. Writers may include: Twain, Chopin, DuBois, Fitzgerald, Eliot, H.D. Vonnegut, Morrison. (First-year students may contact instructor for permission to enroll.) Can fulfill 20th -century requirement.
TR 1:10-2:25 Moglen

English 128 Development of Theatre and Drama II (4) (13765)

Survey of theatre and dramatic literature from the Renaissance to the present. Cross-listed with Theatre 128-10 (14852)
TR 9:20-10:35 Hoelscher

English 142 Introduction to Writing Poetry (4) (16126)

This poetry workshop is a craft course in which the first priority is the intensive study of versification and prosody. Through readings and discussions of canonical and contemporary poetry, as well as texts on the craft of poetry; through structured writing experiments and exercises; and through discussions and critiques of original work produced by class participants, the students in this class will seek familiarity and facility with the tools of writing poetry (in particular, rhythm and meter, sound, form, imagery, figurative language, and tone).
MW 11:10-12:25 Watts, B.

English 144 Introduction to Writing Fiction (4) (15660)

This class is an introduction to writing fiction—in our case, short stories—for workshop criticism. Over the course of the semester, you’ll get extensive practice in techniques of the craft, including plot development, characterization, perspective, dialogue, setting, and the use of figurative language. Through your commitment to the workshop format, you will also develop your skills as a critical reader of others’ work and of your own. We’ll do a lot of reading and a lot of writing, and by the end of the semester you’ll have portfolio of creative work that you can build on in the future.
MW 2:35-3:50 Bauknight

English 170 Amaranth (1) (15209)

Amaranth editorial staff. Students can earn one credit by serving as editors (literary, production, or art) for Lehigh’s literary magazine. Work includes soliciting and reviewing manuscripts, planning a winter supplement and spring issue, and guiding the magazine through all phases of production. Editors attend weekly meetings with the faculty advisor.
T 12:10-1:00 Watts, B.

In an America that seems increasingly divided, protest movements, practiced in conventional and nonconventional ways, have reemerged as potent and effective ways to create social change. Through studying protest literature, we will engage with historical representations and expressions of social protest in America, as well as examine the role of protest movements in our political present. Each unit in the course will ask students to think about cultural identities, such as class, race, gender and sexuality, in concert with what it means to fight for the rights of those identities. We’ll explore central questions (including, what does it mean to protest? what various forms can protest take? where can protest occur and who can participate? how do the stakes vary for those enacting activism?) using a variety of sources, including articles, novels, short stories, plays, poetry, short videos, and film. Often, we’ll pair historical texts, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” with current expressions of protest, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, to gain perspective on today’s turbulent times. Course texts will likely include Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, Ava DuVernay's documentary film, 13th, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart.
Cross-listed with AAS 195-10 (18979) and WGSS 195-10(17779)
TR 9:20-10:35 Edwards, C.

English 198 Love in the Time of Tinder: Relationships, Identity, and Technology (4) (18984)

In this 100-level, cross-listed English, WGSS, and Africana Studies course, we will explore how people use various kinds of digital, electronic, social, and imagined technologies to engage in relationships, both with other people and with the given technologies. Through a series of readings and films, students will:|

Analyze the role of technology in personal relationships, and consider larger social and global issues concerning the production, use, and reliance upon technologies.

Consider the gendered and racial components that affect how individuals interact with technologies or with other people through technology.

Hypothesize why writers and film-makers are preoccupied with futuristic technologies in science fiction and speculative fiction. We will attempt to answer the following questions, among others: What do these preoccupations reveal about our current historical moment and fears? How will technologies continue to impact the way we communicate and bond with one another in the future?
MWF 10:10-11 Heidebrink-Bruno, S

English 303 Grimm’s Tales: Folk, Feminism, Film (4) (19006)

A cultural history of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, in the context of the literary fairy tale in Germany and its European roots. We will analyze how folktale types and gender stereotypes developed and how gender, class, and race affect our views of fairy tales, as modern authors rewrite classical tales. Taught in English. German language students will receive a German component. Cross-listed with German 303-10 (18995), MLL 303-10 (18998), MLL 403-10 (19000), WGSS 303-10 (19002), WGSS 403-10 (19004). Can fulfill an elective requirement.
MW 2:35-3:50 Stegman

English 304 Women & Revolution in Early American Literature (4-3) 10(17995) 11(18096)

The American Revolution happened only a century after Mary Rowlandson was abducted by Native Americans and women were burned alive during the Salem Witch Trials. In this course, we will read the writing that women produced to explore how (or whether) opportunities for women transformed during the long eighteenth century. Were early American women able to participate in public life? If so, which women and under what circumstances? Did early American values such as liberty and independence extend to women? Did women feel like they had a “revolution” in 1776? We will read captivity narratives, poetry, novels, and other public writing to help us explore these issues. Cross-listed with WGSS 304-10 (17997), 304-11 (18097). Can fulfill American to 1900 requirement.
TR 10:45-12:00 Gordon

An introduction to the principles and practices of teaching English as a second or foreign language. Topics include theories of second language acquisition, ESL/EFL teaching methodology and materials, lesson planning, and classroom observations. Can fulfill an elective requirement.
TR 2:35-3:50 Murphy

English 319 Reading Showtime’s Dexter (4-3) 10(18880) 11(18881)

In this course we will watch seven seasons (84 episodes) of Showtime’s Dexter, just as one might study the periodic installments of a serial novel. We will explore how the characters, themes, visual motifs, and central issues of the series (e.g., the nature of evil, justice, fate v. free will) develop over time. Students will view several (6-8) episodes of the show every week, watch and read lectures, write, and respond to other students in the class—developing over the course of the session a sustained thread that explores the entire series, as well as analyzing the particular preoccupations of individual seasons and episodes. Writing will consist of regular written posts to discussion forums, PowerPoint presentations, short exploratory papers throughout the semester, and then a final paper that draws on your earlier writing and that tracks one idea over the entire series. Can fulfill 20th -century requirement.
ONLINE Keetley

English 342 Advanced Poetry Writing (4-3) 10(16909) 11(16910)

This course is designed to be an intensive practice in the craft of poetry and study of the creative process through close readings of poems, essays on craft, and the workshopping of students’ poems. The word “poet” comes from the Greek meaning “maker,” and we will always precede understanding that a poem is not just an expression of an idea or an emotion, but a consciously and carefully made artifact. In addition, one of our goals this semester will be to extend your knowledge of the various formal and stylistic possibilities of the art of poetry and the choices available to each writer. Thus, we will read widely and intensively from a diverse selection of contemporary and canonical poetry, both individual poems and whole collections. Students will write in and out of class, poetry exercises as well as critical analyses, and will workshop each other’s work in a supportive, respectful manner.
MW 2:35-3:50 Watts, B.

English 344 Advanced Fiction Writing (4-3) 10(16911) 11(16912)

Advanced Fiction Writing is a workshop course for writers with experience in the creation and evaluation of contemporary fiction. Students should be familiar with the fundamental concepts of the craft. Either 144 Introduction to Fiction Writing or 201 Topics in Fiction Writing are acceptable prerequisites for this course. Course work will include group collaborations, experiential learning exercises, directed readings of the works of leading contemporary authors, short exercises and assignments, performances and class lectures and the creation of three original short stories--one of which will be a digital storytelling project. The majority of class time will be devoted to fiction lab and workshop to evaluate the original writing produced by students.
TR 2:35-3:50 Watts, S.

English 360 Lepers, Lunatics, and Lollards: The Outcast in Medieval Lit and Culture (4-3) 10(18913) 11(18914)

Who were the outcasts in medieval society? Why is this such an interesting question when we look back to the Middle Ages? In this course we will explore how the outcast is an especially fascinating construct in medieval culture. For some people, being an outcast was a self-imposed choice made as a conscious decision to flee the world and reject the sinful values that define ordinary life. For other people, being an outcast was an unchosen experience of marginalization imposed by powerful institutions and laws on society's most vulnerable members. Reading a wide variety of texts, we will investigate how medieval writers generate multiple categories of exclusion that function both to critique and to promote forms of social hierarchy. As we shall see, these systems of power privilege men over women, the rich over the poor, the healthy over the sick, the faithful over the heretic, and the sane over the mentally ill.
Over the course of the semester, we will read a fascinating array of material that includes texts written for female recluses, fantastic stories about holy men and women, and poems that treat lepers, lunatics, and Lollards, members of England's first indigenous heresy. In exploring this diverse body of writing we will ask a series of questions: Who labels particular people as outcasts? Where does their authority to define come from? How have conceptions of the outcast changed or stayed the same over time? Can fulfill British to 1660 requirement.
MW 11:10-12:25 Crassons

Living between the beginning of the French Revolution (1789) and the Reform Act (1832), the writers we call the British Romantics witnessed rapid social change and radical shifts in political power in Europe. As the British Empire began to take hold in the world, the British population passionately expressed a variety of opinions about pressing social problems including parliamentary reform, the slave trade, widespread poverty, women’s rights, and the ethics of scientific inquiry. In this course we will take up two of these major events—the French Revolution and the Abolitionist movement—as background for units on gothic literature and poetry engaged with perceptions of nature. We will focus on the different ways in which writers such as Jane Austen, Anna Letitia Barbauld, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Felicia Hemans, John Keats, Mary Prince, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and William Wordsworth expressed their reactions to a rapidly changing world in their literature. Writing Intensive. Department Approval Required. Can fulfill British 1660-1900 requirement.
MW 1:10-2:25 Dolan

English 384 “New Brown America”: Race and Identity in the 21st Century (4-3) 10 (19135) 11(19136)

What does it mean to be brown in America in 2019? How have recent historical events -- from 9/11 to the election of Donald Trump -- impacted the status of immigrant communities? This course will explore a range of contemporary texts from popular culture, including novels, films, stand-up comedy albums, and musical recordings, all of which explore the changing nature of identity. Many of our primary texts will explore points of intersection between different ethic and racial groups, including black/Latino/Asian intersections, multiracial identities, and the broad, trans-racial appropriation of hip hop culture. We will also read from critical race theorists who will help students develop a conceptual vocabulary to engage these issues. Starting points will be material by Hasan Minhaj, Mindy Kaling, Eddie Huang, Rupi Kaur, and Mohsin Hamid. Students will be encouraged to bring their own interests and suggested materials to the course. Can fulfill 20th -century requirement. AAS & LAS attribute.
TR 2:35-3:50 Singh

English 387 Filmmaking Studio (4-3) 10(18916) 11(18917)

In this studio course, we will be completing work on a documentary film on the impacts of the Sands Casino on the Southside of Bethlehem. This is a film that students began in Summer 2018 as part of a Mountaintop project and have been continuing to work on throughout Fall 2018. We are looking to augment our filmmaking team by adding experts in Marketing, Graphics, and Sound or Music. The filmmakers will be premiering the film at a July 2019 festival and would like to develop a marketing plan, a musical/sound score, and develop a website for the film to help promote and archive the film and its accompanying research. This class will meet by appointment. Instructor's permission required. Can fulfill an elective requirement.
TBD Kramp

English 441 The Pasts and Futures of Early Modern Women’s Literature (3) (18949)

Ninety years ago, Virginia Woolf claimed that a woman “born with a gift of poetry in the sixteenth century, was an unhappy woman, a woman at strife against herself.” We’ll begin here—and with Woolf’s assessment of seventeenth-century authors Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (“harassed and distracted”); Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (“a vision of loneliness and riot”); and Aphra Behn (“plebeian virtues of humour, vitality and courage”)—in order to explore the critical history of pitying, ignoring, overlooking, minimizing, dismissing, recovering, celebrating, analyzing, theorizing, historicizing, critiquing, and marginalizing sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women’s literature. Our primary readings will trace the arc of recovery and canonization, following a chronological path through the criticism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: we’ll encounter seventeenth-century devotional writings by Protestant women earlier in the semester than either the contemporaneous works of Catholic women or Anne Lok’s 1560 sonnet sequence, which only received extensive critical attention at the turn of our century. Authors like Lucy Hutchinson and Anne Bradstreet will appear at various points in the syllabus, as critical preferences have shifted over the past few decades from women’s domestic poetry to their political investments, and as scholars have identified anonymous texts like Hutchinson’s biblical epic, Order and Disorder, with their female authors. This approach will help us to identify both broader literary critical trends and the specific values that have been associated with women’s writing over the past forty years. We’ll ask whether the recovery of women’s writing and the recognition of women’s literary histories should be considered social justice projects; why we can’t break the tenacious hold of “the woman writer”; and what the future might hold for scholars and readers of early modern women. What pathways are available in the literary criticism of our contemporary moment? What pathways are available in the poetry, prose, and drama of early modern women? And how might a social justice criticism arise at their intersection? Department Approval Required.
R 4:10-7:00 Lay

English 442 Racial Thought in 18th Century British Literature (3) (19112)

In separate American and British monographs, Katy Chiles and Roxann Wheeler have argued that, "Racial thought at the close of the eighteenth century differed radically from that of the nineteenth century, when the concept of race as a fixed biological category would emerge. Instead, many early Americans [and 18th-century Britons] thought that race was an exterior bodily trait, incrementally produced by environmental factors, and continuously subject to change."
This course explores the ways in which British writers captured the radical difference of 18th century racial thought in an assortment of plays, poetry, novels, short stories, slave and epistolary narratives. Using gender as a strategic narrative guide, we will trace some of the complexities associated with changes in racial thought as it develops from being a fluid concept to a fixed one. Along the way, we discuss how historical events such as the Mansfield Judgment, the abolition of the British slave trade, the Glorious Revolution, the Hardwicke Marriage Act and the Jewish Naturalization Bill affected representations of British men and women as well as the residents who are deliberately Othered within the nation (Negroes, slaves, Creoles, Nabobs, Jews, Irish). We will also read recent theories about gender and racial construction in the eighteenth century in order to probe an assortment of related questions: how do issues like marriage, libertinism, and sexual double standards influence 18th century racial thought? What roles do slavery and miscegenation in the colonies play in the establishment of racial thought in Britain? Is Jewishness a racialized identity in the 18th century? Is whiteness a fluid or fixed racial category? How does blackness function as a political tool?
Texts will include a variety of canonical and obscure texts including Behn's The Fair Jilt, The Adventure of the Black Lady and Oroonoko, selections from Dunton's Athenian Sport, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, The Woman of Colour, Edgeworth's Harrington, Equiano's Interesting Narrative, Macready's Irishman in London; or, the Happy African, and Day and Bicknell's "The Dying Negro." Department Approval Required.
TR 1:10-2:25 Dominique

This course considers the relationship between concepts of justice and the workings of financial markets, using texts from the antebellum U.S. about commerce, slavery, and the literary marketplace to explore what makes a market just or unjust. The mid-nineteenth century United States witnessed a turning point in the history of capitalism as industrialization began to overtake agrarian and artisan labor, trade networks developed across the globe, and a specific type of market exchange entrenched itself as the defining feature of the modern world. As the specter of communism spread across Europe in the 1840s and 50s, Karl Marx contributed a regular column to the New York Tribune that introduced alternatives to the capitalist ethos that was increasingly wedded to American notions of democracy and individual liberty. Antebellum literary texts foreground these issues. We will read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Moby-Dick, the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and a range of texts by Edgar Allan Poe. We will also read Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall, William Wells Brown’s Clotel, and Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig. Department Approval Required.
M 1:10-4 Whitley

English 482 Theories of Literature and Social Justice (3) (17479)

In this course, we will explore questions such as these: What is literature? What is social justice? How is literature (here, broadly conceived to include an array of cultural and textual productions) distinctive in the way that it intervenes in social justice? In what ways do literary works provide tools to map exploitative or oppressive social, ecological, and economic formations? And in what ways do they create practices for imagining human flourishing and more just ways of living? Together we will consider a range of reading, writing, and teaching strategies as practices of social justice. To pursue this inquiry, we will study critical texts that theorize literature, justice, sociality, narrative, and adaptation, and we will put these theoretical approaches in conversation with a sampling of literary text. Department Approval Required.
W 1:10-4:00 Rollins & Servitje

English 491-10 Race and Literature for Youth (3) (17480)

Recent calls for more diversity in publishing, and literature in general, have effectively caused mainstream reevaluation of how race has systemically shaped the categorizations and foundations of literature for youth. This course will analysis past and present movements for greater diversity in literature for youth along with how these movements parallel with the creation of ethnic studies and revisions of the U.S. Canon. We will revisit "classics" of children's literature, such as Little House in the Big Woods (1932) by Laura Ingalls Wilder and for how they reflect national mythologies of race and Manifest Destiny, and analyze past and recent works by writers and scholars of color who centralize indigenous, African American, Latinx, and Asian American narratives about growing up "American." In terms of critical works, we will approach the area of youth literature and media from a variety of perspectives including critical race and postcolonial theory. Tentative assignments include a book review for a scholarly journal in children's literature, childhood, youth studies, and ethnic studies and a conference paper in the student's field of choice which intersects with youth literature and culture. Department Approval Required.
Tentative lists of required texts:

English 491-11 Civic Engagement, Community Literacies, and the Public Work of Rhetoric (3) (18952)

This course examines the ways scholars can engage their communities through projects both inside and outside the classroom. Together we will explore the theoretical and practical ways in which civic engagement can intersect with “academic labor,” an intersection which has become a more recent tradition within the rhetoric and composition discipline. This tradition includes the powerful counter-rhetorics needed to organize people to work together on complex problems through problem-posing, pragmatic inquiry, and the inclusion of marginalized perspectives. Some of our discussion topics will include community-based research methods, citizenship-based pedagogies, public intellectualism, community college teaching, and community literacy projects. Readings from the course will be taken from such scholar-activists as Cornell West, Keith Gilyard, Linda Flower, Lorraine Higgins, David Coogan, John Ackerman, Julie Lundquist and others. You will have the opportunity to focus on your own community engagement projects or pedagogical ideas. By the end of the semester, you should be able to have a broader understanding of the “civic turn” in rhetoric and composition studies, and you will begin to develop a toolkit of research strategies, methods, and pedagogical practices in which to engage your own citizen-scholar projects. Department Approval Required.
TR 10:45-12:00 Handley